Property News · August 19, 2017

Order v disorder: the two faces of a magical garden


It is the clever use of topiary and riotous flower combinations at this Buckinghamshire farmhouse that make it such a thrillIt’s a huge stand of Verbena bonariensis that offers the first clue about what kind of garden lies beyond the five-barred gate. The verbena’s spindly stems topped with tiny lilac pompoms like a map of the stars have colonised one side of an ancient open-sided barn with an undulating roof of rust-red tiles. Above the froth, the eye is drawn to the horizontal line of a grapevine trained along the eaves and a tightly clipped specimen of potted topiary at one end. This tension between form and free-for-all is what makes retired farmer Marilyn Godden’s garden such a thrill.When Godden and her husband moved into this Buckinghamshire farmhouse in 1980, there was little more than a 40ft tall laurel hedge and some mistreated box topiary to call a garden. It took three weeks to trim the riotous hedge, then she started work on a little bed under the kitchen window. Over the subsequent decades, Godden gradually turned the moisture-retaining clay-heavy pasture into a series of beautiful garden rooms, with the helpful addition of manure – freely available from her herds of beef cattle and sheep. The farmhouse has required much time and energy, too. “The house dates from 1692 but it’s older than that – they did a refurb in 1692, the chimney and inglenook were Tudor,” she explains. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
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